Battlefield 3's single player does not suck

[FFHAuthor]

Not so much because of the story (I didn't have a clue what was going on to be honest), but because of two factors: looks and sound.

Sadly, you summarize the counterpoint to your statement rather completely in that single sentence. A Single Player campaign in an FPS is based around three things: Unique Plot, Memorable Characters, and Immersive experience.

BF3's Single player lacked all of them. The Plot was a hodge-podge of action game/movie/book/TV show cliche experiences. The Characters were forgettable to the point that I could not remember the Main character's name between the framing narrative scenes. The Experiance was broken enough in places that I was constantly jarred out of it through bad AI, QTEs, and game crashes and freezes. Even the gameplay itself was filled with 'stock scenes' from other shooters. Sniper sequence, lone wolf sequence, squad firefight sequence, escort sequence, stealth sequence, turret shooter sequence, first person execution sequence.

Even the 'Good parts' like the dogfight and the first quarter of the tank sequence were rather rough. The dogfight was interesting, but it's little more than a QTE without the buttons flashing on the screen. The Tank battle was filled with bad AI (Look at the Iranians driving in circles!), bad graphics (Nice how the thermal scope dosen't see the T-90 two foot away...), and ludicrous scripted stops (Yeah, okay, we'll stop IN THE ARTILLERY BARRAGE, that you mentioned TWO MINUTES PRIOR, would KILL US.)

It was just bad, a Mutliplayer tutorial that had an extraneous plot. Did it look good? Yeah, somewhat. Did it sound good? Meh, kinda. Was that enough to justify it? No, the novelty of pretty visuals and great sound wore off after the second firefight. If you're making a game now in a major publishing studio, you damn well better have your game come out looking good and running well, and they couldn't manage THAT for the Single Player without a 121 mb patch on day one and 2 gigs of stored files on my hard drive, and even then the game still glitches out more than X-Com and I've had that for over a decade.

 

[aashell13]

A short, linear campaign with a story sufficiently unremarkable as to go mostly unnoticed that happens to look nice and sound good?

Where I come from this is a rather damming indictment, not high praise.

And don't think I'm hating on BF3 for the sake of hating on BF3. I was genuinely hoping that it would have a lengthy campaign with a compelling and well written story so that I would have an excuse to buy the thing, seeing as I abhor internet multiplayer.

 

[Wedgetail122]

Personally being the fanboy I probably am, im going to say that I actually did enjoy the single player, I will start with the negatives first though, now the game did display moments where you can get your ass kicked if you dont go prone and actually think about it, playing it on normal was kinda a headache when a single shotgun burst from a Terrorist/Russian/Private contractor would leave you to sit through a loading screen, it was linear, but these days what do you really expect from a first person shooter, the days of half life are over sadly, or at least untiol newell finished his endless box of choclates. those issues for me are the only ones that I can signal out that really gives the game crap, but there are also several grey areas, the Quick Time Events for instance, whilst many complained about them and said that they done belong in a Battlefield Game, I found my self actually liking them for one sole reason, that they eliminate cutscenes where you do absolutley nothing, the story is also another one of those Grey areas, it did feel Too much like call of duty, but there aren't many topics that the Modern Warfare FPS Genre can do any more, although it would have been cool if they replaced the The Iranians with hostile alien Drones, who wouldn't like that, especially when some parts of the game did feel like that god awful/awsome scuace (depending of how much of a Military Nerd/COD Fanboy/Gun Nut you are)movie Battle:LA, for those who could sit through and mentally comprehend the story line it was slightly amusing, and there were some shcoking moments like the level wehere you *spoiler* kill your CO, and there were also some memorable quotes, such as the good marine matkovich uttered about his lengthy dream about a vanilla milkshake,the pro's for me were the missions themselves, the brilliant environments, and Tank Combat that is better than most games that actually focus on tanks, the characters were forgettable save for your friendly vanilla dreaming marine, and times where the major assualts were going on really felt epic, and more scaled than any COD Game can provide, thats just my opinion but I dont think that the game really deserves all the crap it gets for its singleplayer, to be honest whether we like it or not Call of Duty MW3 will get a 10/10 on most gaming reviews, save for our good yachtzee and the un bias reviews of the escapist, so considering that BF3 was slightly more engaging for me in the SP department than COD, I think that its only fair that BF3 doesnt recieve ALL the shit its getting, for whatever they screwed up in the SP they made up for in the multiplayer

 

[Zhukov]

Nobody is saying the single player campaign looks or sounds bad.

They're saying that every single other facet of it is bad. And they're right.

For a start, their design document clearly consisted of Modern Warfare with a big arrow and the words "Basically, just this". Middle Eastern terrorists threatening the land of freedom and apple pie. Russians. Stolen nuclear weapons. Story told through multiple perspectives and flashbacks. Heavily scripted "stealth" section that consists of following an NPC's instructions. It even does that thing where they kill off a character in first person perspective. For shame, Dice.

The scripting is ridiculous. If you try and take so much as a step out off the predetermined path the game throws a giant immersion destroying warning in your face and insta-kills you. It's a terrible way to compensate for shitty level design. There's nothing wrong with a linear game, but your level design should support that linearity.

Oh, and quick time events. Because those always make for wonderful gameplay, right? The vast majority of the ones in Battlefield 3 don't even make sense. Why am I punching this guy when I have a bloody gun? Just shoot him. And why is my entire squad just standing there watching? Just shoot him you idiots.

The writing is of course utterly forgettable in every way. Apparently I was expected to care when a bunch of marines died. But they completely forgot to characterise more than one of them. Oh, and can anyone tell me why the bad guy was out to ruin everybody's day? Because I'm pretty sure they never even hinted at an explanation. Apparently he was just running around setting of nukes because someone needed to in order to make the game more like Call of Duty.

 

[Duffeknol]

updated first post

 

[TheDooD]

snip

I'll forever say Bad Company is the path EA should have took with Battlefield. I no longer want an overly seriously WAAAAGH Campaign, BC's humor and cheesyness made the experience much more enjoyable. Let CoD have Mike Bay Army/Marine hardon. Let BF be like M.A.S.H. just with more shooting and such.

 

[General BrEeZy]

I only hate the random dying for no good reason and what happened to Miller--F**king dicks. I'm loving it though, other peoples' opinions are of no consequence to me...

 

[Zer_]

I enjoyed the campaign. I mean it was nothing ground breaking, but the overall presentation and the core gameplay was awesome. The experience was great.

 

[Tryforlive]

i hated the single player it was just so boring and they tried nothing new it was run shoot run shoot run shoot NUKE NUKE NUKE but i didn't care if he stopped the bad guys or not (i honestly forgot his name) the multiplayers alright i guess

 

[Wolfram23]

Just finished the game about... 40 seconds ago. It was really fun. Not amazing, I mean the story was basically the same stuff we've seen in every other shooter lol. Actually I kept thinking about MW2, with the nuke plot.

Anyway, it was crazy fun. Destructible environments, amazingly detailed sound, and big explosions = happy times.

Now to do some multiplayer I had fun in the Beta so I'm guessing it'll be more of the same... with tanks.

 

[MisterDyslexo]

It wasn't that good, but thats to be expected from DICE. It was better than I expected, and better than what everybody says about it. It had pretty bad pacing, so there was never that high note, although I think a lot of people will say that it probably came in the first level where you played the Russian (Comrades). The only reason I feel the QTEs failed so miserably because pressing a key or button one time roughly translates into 22 body motions. Would've been way better if you had more prompts, varying on the difficulty level. Some of the levels had good design, some had very poor design (A Rock And A Hard Place), but most were just average, a meh in terms of design. There are actually very few bugs, the only noticeable one is that the enemy will phase through walls to stab you in the chest if you're within 15 feet of them. The enemy AI suffers from everything pretty much all games do-they'll either be completely ignorant of you, or they'll aim at you, and only you, with perfect accuracy. Plus the ally AI pushes you out of cover, which will always be a pet peeve of mine since the game should be made around the player, not vice-versa.

Overall though, I'd say it was decent. Not really any problems with it, just that it was average. But the fact they put out a campaign that did throw in a decent amount of variety, worked well mechanically, served as a good tutorial for most aspects of the main focus-multiplayer gameplay (only vehicle covered was a tank), all points to the fact that if they hire more/better writers, pace it better, maybe flush out the characters some more (what little they had in the game actually beats most characters in FPS games) so I actually give a rat's ass about them when they die, and it'd probably be good. I mean, it pretty much had everything the recent Medal of Honor had, just not as good execution.

Although that level with the jet still pisses me off. Why can't we fly a damn jet outside of multiplayer? Its very difficult to in multiplayer if you don't have flares, as you'll be shot down in ten seconds flat.

 

[])rStrangelove]

They overdid the time keypresses esp near the end, but overall this SP campaign is one of the best fun i ever had. Personal fav would be the storming of the villa as one of the Russians.

I'll also buy MW3 just for the SP btw, i'm an action story nut.

 

[The_ModeRazor]

I saw that airplane level. John Baine (Total Biscuit) did a WTF on Battlefield 3. Holy shit that was boring as hell. I don't think I'd want to play that. Ever. But the multiplayer seems really good.
And this got me thinking... why do I still think that Modern Wurfurr (that is, CoD 4) had a good singleplayer? It's the same formula as every other game in the series, but the others I did not like. I just don't get it.

 

[])rStrangelove]

I saw that airplane level. John Baine (Total Biscuit) did a WTF on Battlefield 3. Holy shit that was boring as hell. I don't think I'd want to play that. Ever. But the multiplayer seems really good.
And this got me thinking... why do I still think that Modern Wurfurr (that is, CoD 4) had a good singleplayer? It's the same formula as every other game in the series, but the others I did not like. I just don't get it.

In COD4 you had great characters running around with you, dragging you with them through the story. In BF3 its all over the place.

 

[The_ModeRazor]

)rStrangelove]

I saw that airplane level. John Baine (Total Biscuit) did a WTF on Battlefield 3. Holy shit that was boring as hell. I don't think I'd want to play that. Ever. But the multiplayer seems really good.
And this got me thinking... why do I still think that Modern Wurfurr (that is, CoD 4) had a good singleplayer? It's the same formula as every other game in the series, but the others I did not like. I just don't get it.

In COD4 you had great characters running around with you, dragging you with them through the story. In BF3 its all over the place.

Didn't play BF3. My problem with what I saw was that it was incredibly boring, an "interactive" movie at best. And it dragged on for waaaaaay too long.
I was referring to all the CoD games since the first MW. The camapigns left me feeling... disappointed. But I still have fond memories of Modern Warfare. Ah well. It might be the characters. Or the Nuke. (nukes make everything better in fiction, it seems)

 

[dagill]

why do I still think that Modern Wurfurr (that is, CoD 4) had a good singleplayer? It's the same formula as every other game in the series, but the others I did not like. I just don't get it.

Beacuse COD4's campaign was decent. The characters weren't bad, and it just kind of made sense. The nuclear bomb was a bit of a sucky plot device, but aside from that it wasn't too bad.

 

[SovietSecrets]

I immensely enjoyed the campaign up to the assault on the house and after that I didn't enjoy it as much. After beating the game and looking back, everything from that point on felt insanely rushed. I mean the game ends with a character I didn't even care about to begin with. The ending felt too sudden and rushed for my liking. Beginning half of the game was fantastic though. No idea how I enjoy Modern Warfare SPs so much now, but I do.

 

[Kamelmann]

Started extremely high and seems to steadily go downhill from that point.

Pretty much what the quoted fine gentleman says.

The opening mission was pretty damn good, but then it was left down by the later part.

Beautiful graphics wise (first game i've actually played on my new rig) with some good voice work, I just feel that they wanted to be taken slightly too seriously following Bad Company 2 (whose single player I prefer).

TBH though.. whatever faults it has.. it makes up for it with this-> http://youtu.be/eg8Bh5iI2WY?t=9m50s (no idea how to embed this)

 

[Delsana]

Repetitive, vulgar, poor story, illogical at points, HORRIBLE difficulty balancing, the exclusion of night-vision goggles and focus on flash lights... lack of really any tactical assets... UH HELLO DRONES?!?!?

It's ridiculous.

 

[Baneat]

Started extremely high and seems to steadily go downhill from that point.

Pretty much what the quoted fine gentleman says.

The opening mission was pretty damn good, but then it was left down by the later part.

Beautiful graphics wise (first game i've actually played on my new rig) with some good voice work, I just feel that they wanted to be taken slightly too seriously following Bad Company 2 (whose single player I prefer).

TBH though.. whatever faults it has.. it makes up for it with this-> http://youtu.be/eg8Bh5iI2WY?t=9m50s (no idea how to embed this)

youtube = eg8Bh5iI2WY&feature=youtu.be&t=9m50s

remove spaces beside equals signs and enclose the whole thing in square brackets.